Finding the Way Home
by Woodswolf
Summary: I've discovered a history she didn't want me to know, I've discovered a truth she didn't want me to see. I've found that I'm not hers. I have to get out of here.
1. Nightmare

_(A/N): I have some things to address._

_Thing one: This is set in a strange mash-up of book- and movie-verse. It is mainly book-verse, and to get the scale of exactly how wrong this is, and some of the later parts, you will have to have read the book; however, you can just as easily get by with only the movie's canon, but I cannot guarantee safe passage / that everything will make sense to you._

_Thing two: Building from that, the most important question people ask involving book/movie crossovers is: Is Wybie involved?_

_To answer your question, it's actually irrelevant because of [redacted: major spoiler]. Neither Wybie or OW make an appearance, but you can imagine that Wybie is out there somewhere if you so desire._

_Thing three: I don't fucking know why, but when I wrote this, I read [redacted: spoiler] mother as having a Southern accent. I have no fucking idea why. I'm swearing at myself for reading her with a. Fucking. Southern. Accent._

_No offense to Southerners, but I'm supposed to be reading her British (mainly book-verse, as I said). Why the _fuck_ am I reading her like that?_

_Moving on._

~(::)~ ONE: NIGHTMARE ~(::)~

I wake up breathing heavily.

I begin to cry.

Each one is worse than the last.

I can't remember them, but I know.

I know each is worse.

My mother hears my sobs and rushes into the room.

"Shh, shh, it's alright… it's alright… shh…"

I try to slow my breathing. Mother wraps her comforting arms around me.

It's too bad I no longer have a father to comfort me.

I whimper.

"It's okay… it's okay…"

I bury my face in her nightshirt. She dries my tears.

"Another nightmare?"

I nod, wiping my eyes.

"Oh, it's okay… it's okay…"

I whimper again.

"I used to have nightmares, too… but one day, they stopped, and I lived happily after that. But my mother asked me to kill her one day – she was dying. So I did as she asked, even though I didn't like it. And now, here I am, happy as can be, with a daughter of my own."

Mother sighs wistfully.

"When you have a kid of your own, you'll have to remember the secret, you know."

I smile.

"Mother's hugs and hot cocoa can fix anything."

"That's right!" she says, wrapping me up in a big, warm bear hug.

Come to think of it, what's a bear?

"Let's go get that hot cocoa now, okay? I think we both could use some."

I laugh.

"Tag! You're it!"

I laugh again, running out of my room.

"You get back here, sweetie!"

I hear the smile in her voice and run faster, laughing joyously.

Eventually I become cornered in the kitchen.

My mother approaches me, a smile on her face, but it's not the kind smile I'm used to – it's sinister and evil and makes me shiver, making me think that I've been in this exact situation before.

_The room seems to darken, and the walls shift and change, and a ball of white becomes barely visible in the corner of my eye…_

She taps my shoulder and says, "I win," and everything returns to normal.

"Let's have that hot cocoa now, okay?"

I nod.

But what did that remind me of?

I look up into her eyes and see my reflection.

The polished obsidian makes me look dark and ghostly, doll-like.

I smile at my reflection and my unblinking button eyes stare back at me with the same delight.

_(A/N): What, you didn't think I would pull this card?_

_Have you read ANY of my other fics? Seriously? You should know I'm going to pull that card. You should have known since the redacted signs up there._

_..._

_Assuming you've read any of my other fics, you can also probably guess the ending. It will be entertaining nonetheless, because there's still the other redacted sign up there._

_The end._

_I've got two more chapters of this lined up. Fuck their A/Ns, you're getting them raw from the press._

_The real end._


	2. Apple

~(::)~ TWO: APPLE ~(::)~

_Remember us!_

* * *

I only remember three voices from this nightmare.

But it wasn't nearly as bad as the previous one had been – or, that I could tell. I had this 'instinct' of sorts that was able to tell me what horrors I had faced.

They were talking to me.

I can't remember what they said.

Well, except for one sentence: _Remember us._

I decided to ask my mother about it. She would know what it meant.

She doesn't take kindly to it, though.

"Remember who? I don't know what your dream was about, but you've only ever known a few people: me, yourself, and our neighbors. It doesn't make sense."

"I don't know. I don't think it's supposed to make sense, anyway," I tell her. "It's a dream."

"Exactly, sweetie. Don't dwell on it too much."

I don't know what to think, though, when I see the expression on her face – half smiling, half worried. It's almost as if I've discovered something I should have known…

The day moves on quickly after that.

I help Mister Bobo, our upstairs neighbor, feed his rats. They've always interested me – bright red eyes, sharp yellow teeth, long pink tails. Mother says they help keep away cats and dogs and raccoons and other things with rabies.

They're fun to watch – they're always scurrying over each other. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can see one of them roll around with another one, playing together. It's not very often, though.

Mister Bobo also apparently trained them to do tricks – he told me they could sing and dance, and I tried to get them to, but they just acted like regular rats.

In the afternoon, I go downstairs to the ladies' flat, Misses Spink and Forcible, and I help them with their show. It's fun to be an actress (I once helped them with a short three-person play – the dogs went wild at the end), and they get to do this all the time.

After that, I go home, and play a game with Mother. It's her turn to choose, so we played Monopoly until my bedtime. My favorite is 'Happy Families', but we play it so often I'm surprised Mother isn't sick of it.

Right before bed, I go and get myself a cup of hot chocolate.

"I don't want to have to wake you up tonight."

My mother smiles.

"Oh, it's okay…"

She hugs me, and I go into the hall again to go upstairs.

But I notice something in the mirror.

It looks like a discarded apple core.

I walk over to it and realize that it's only in the mirror.

I try to reach out to it and the room changes,_ and everything becomes cold, and voices whisper in the darkness, and tiny bites of apple enter my mouth one at a time, and a ghostly kiss is planted on my cheek…_

I shake myself out of the illusion. It was my mother kissing me goodnight.

"Goodnight, sweetheart."

I walk upstairs into my bedroom and go to bed.


	3. Story

~(::)~ THREE: STORY ~(::)~

_Don't lose yourself!_

_We all did!_

_Remember us!_

* * *

It's a recurring nightmare. I'm sure of it.

I know because I remember _'Remember us!'_ from the previous night.

There was a bit more this time.

I can't help but wonder who 'us' is, or who 'we' are.

I may never know.

I didn't wake Mother up, though, so I'm happy.

I smile as I get dressed, looking through my drawers for my favorite sweater.

I don't know why it's my favorite. It always has been.

But today is my day to choose the game we play tonight. Mother probably already knows my choice.

Last night's game of Monopoly was fun, though… maybe we can invite Mister Bobo and his singing rats over and we can all play together. And Misses Spink and Forcible, of course, but they've got too many dogs to invite them all.

I don't think we have enough Monopoly pieces to play with all of them, anyway.

It'll just be Happy Families with Mother, then.

_Whoosh!_

_What was that?_ I wonder.

I turn around, facing the direction the strange wind was blowing to.

There's something on the floor in my closet.

I walk up to it and pick it up.

It's an old piece of paper, yellowed, curled and torn with age, with some text written on it.

_C STORY:_

_THERE WAS A GIRL HER NAME WAS APPLE. SHE USED TO DANCE A LOT. SHE DANCED AND DANCED UNTIL HER FEET TURNED TO SOSSAJES THE END._

I didn't know how I knew it would be there, but at the bottom of the page there is a picture of a girl dancing around in circles.

I try to curl back the part of the page that has curled over the part near the C, but it makes that part of the page fracture into a million tiny pieces.

I want to know the full title of the story. It was pretty funny, after all, and whoever the author was didn't sign it.

I try to think of words that begin with C:

_Cat_

_Caged_

_Children_

_Copy_

_Crude_

_Cor-_

"Sweetie, time for breakfast!"

I go downstairs at my mother's call.

What was I thinking of?

_(A/N): Just had to put this here. Sorry about that 'fuck their A/Ns' promise._

_Anyone else impressed by how far the OM has gotten [redacted: character must not know their name - i am paranoid that they will find out - well fuck you too] under her thumb?_

_I love writing this._


	4. Face

_(A/N): I know it's been a while._

_Here's two chapters._

~(::)~ FOUR: FACE ~(::)~

I finish my glass of orange juice and go outside.

The day is a relatively ordinary one overall.

I help Mister Bobinsky. Feeding his rats is fun, and he says that they're almost done training.

I'm happy.

The rats seem to be more playful and excited. They're happy, too.

A few of them look at me, from time to time. Most of them have a 'grin' of sorts on their face, and it makes me laugh.

After the rats have run back into their hiding places before their afternoon training, I head downstairs to the ladies' apartment.

Once that part of the daily routine is done (the dogs seem to yap their praise a bit more), I go back up to my apartment and inside.

Mother seems to be happy and tired today, so we don't play a game before bed tonight. Instead, I decide to take a book downstairs to read for a little while.

I come down the stairs and walk down the hall, and I fancy, for a minute, that a few faces move beneath the mirror at the end of the hall.

The mirror has had a lot of strange stuff happening to it recently, hasn't it?

But the strangeness doesn't end there. I am pulled, once again, into a strange kind of dream, _where everything is duller, more foreboding, and a trail of green fire leads where it wants to..._

_There is a weight in my palm. A dull brown stone sits there, and I feel its magic working in the air around me. I follow the trail of fire, the one the mirror desires to lead me to..._

_A ghostly whisper enters my mind from a hidden memory, and I obey it, raising the stone to my eye..._

_Everything blurs to nothing, fades to black, _and I am standing in the hallway, balancing the book on my palm, staring at my reflection in the mirror.

_What is happening to me?_


	5. Dream

~(::)~ FIVE: DREAM ~(::)~

_I am in a dark abyss._

_Shadows shift in this darkness. It is an evil darkness, showing the presence of things._

_Three forms float on the edges of my vision, silhouettes that haunt my dreams and my nightmares. I cannot see them; I know they are there, but I cannot see them._

_The shadows shift, and the abyss I am floating in simplifies; I am sitting in a dark room, one that I do not know._

_I know I recognize it._

_'We are sorry we had to awaken you,' a voice says. 'But that is better than death.'_

_I am confused. I find that I cannot speak when I try to turn my questions into sound, and sound into answers._

_'We know you have been seeing us, been aware of us,' another whispers. 'You have been seeing our attempts to show you, not understanding our attempts to tell you.'_

_'This world is a dark place,' a third voice hisses, a windy wave, rolling over me. 'Evil. It haunts thoughts and steals souls. It kills.'_

_'There is no way out now. When death will come, we cannot guarantee; but you are almost here.'_

_'Find the way out. Find the way home.'_

_'Don't lose yourself!'_

_'We all did!'_

_'Remember us!'_

_The dream shifts._

_I am in an empty white space. It is beyond the end, beyond the edge._

_I know this place, somehow._

_Why do I know it?_

_I turn around. It is hard to tell if I am in the milky whiteness that surrounds me._

_A few feet away, there is a black shadow. It shouldn't be here, I know that._

_I approach it._

_It is a key._

_That fades away as well, and the dream disappears for a moment to the blackness. Then it returns._

_I am in my living room._

_Wallpaper is torn away in a corner._

_I know the corner. I was always strangely comforted by it when I was younger, but I have grown away from it with time._

_There is an outline of a door._

_A keyhole is the only identifying feature about it. That is the only thing that tells me what I have found, what I am finding._

_I am finding the way home._

_The dream fades to white, and then to black, and then to nothing._

I wake, and nothing is strange, and everything is normal.

I hope to keep this memory.

And then it makes me wonder why I thought that. I keep every memory.

My life is a strange thing that I don't understand.

What is the 'home', anyway?


End file.
